


let the silver arrow fly

by solikerez



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, ben solo is bad at dates, finn is still not putting up with any shit, if tfa was a dating sim and the player is really bad at dating sims this would be the result, leia is always plotting something, rey just wants to live her life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:31:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8972152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solikerez/pseuds/solikerez
Summary: Leia plays cupid, and fires a few misshots before getting it right.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LarirenShadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LarirenShadow/gifts).



> For Ring in the Reylo! You gave me so many good prompts to work with, thank you! I hope you like it!

"Is this my punishment?"

With two fingers pressed to her right temple, Leia Organa glances up at her son through weary eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ben."

He's hardly sat down since he entered her office, nothing short of a whirlwind of unbridled annoyance. He practically wears a path into the floor with his pacing, and she can see the way his jaw clenches and his fists curl and uncurl. She tells herself that he is under control. Or she hopes, at least.

"I mean it. Is this my penance for all that I've done? Torturing me by trying to get me to _settle down?"_

She needs a drink _._

"Listen, Ben. I'm tired. The council's been breathing down my neck for the past five months, waiting for you to make a wrong move so they can tell me that _they told me so_ and have your head on a chopping block. My hands are tied here, they really are, because you're my son and I want you,” she pauses. “I want you to be able to live your life, not just waste away in a cell. But I have a responsibility to the Resistance and to the people of this galaxy to make sure they feel safe, and right now, they still think you're a threat."

He perks up, looking around the room desperately as if the key to beating Leia Organa's famed stubbornness lies in cracks in the duracrete crawling up the walls. "Then let me prove myself, this will not help anythi-"

She cuts him off. "Let me finish. I'm not saying this is the only solution, but we're running out of ideas. You know the conditions to the deal we made for your freedom: one full year to prove that you can reintegrate into this society and to show that you are not a threat. To do that, you need to show that you are capable of being trusted. Not just by your family. You need to prove yourself, Ben, but I also want you to be happy. This is a plan that could help you do both."

The air between them shifts as he considers, Ben's expression souring as if he is about to say something he never would have said before.

" _Fine._ "

"Good."

It is the deal that starts it all.

 

+++

 

He feels like a caged animal.

There are two Resistance guards tailing him whenever he steps foot from the confines of his quarters. They watch him warily, like he is a time bomb ready to go off. To them, he is a volatile weapon pushed aside with the safety left off.

The guards follow him to the mess hall, where he can feel the weight of many eyes on him.  He senses their stares at the back of his head, feels their barely hidden disgust within.

Until he comes to stop near someone who doesn't even bother to hide it.

"Ah, really? Seriously?! What are you doing here, Ren? Did the General send you over here so you could bother us instead of her?"

Ben isn't sure what bewitched him to walk straight toward the person whose dislike for him is strongest, but somehow he's drawn toward Rey, who sits by Finn's side, eyeing him with a scrutinizing gaze. Finn pushes away from his seat, only sitting back down when he sees the look in Rey's eyes and her hand gently pressing him back down to his seat.

"Just... just let him sit, Finn. We'll make a scene."

Those are the wrong words it seems.

"What? You think his presence here doesn’t cause enough of a scene in the first place? He _hurt_ me, Rey. He's hurt so many of us. He's hurt people's friends and their families. Excuse me if I think that he doesn't deserve to just sit here quietly with his foot in his mouth as if nothing ever happened."

A look of slight betrayal flashes across Finn's face and for some reason it forces a lump in Ben's throat. He hadn't intended this, not when he’s so used to the beaming faces and the soft words passed between the two. Somehow, it feels wrong to be the one to destroy that. He'll leave, because of course it’s him who is the problem. Always the problem.

He wants to leave and tell her it's fine but she doesn't give him the chance.

"You think I don't understand that, Finn? I can see it, _feel_ the way they all look at him. I feel their pain, their anger, their grief. But I've also seen him, Finn. For _two kriffing years_ , two absolutely hellish years, I had to cope with the feeling of his mind racing along with mine. Feeling the same things everyone else feels except manifested differently . The pain, the anger, and the grief, but more crippling than all the rest was the guilt. That was what festered in his mind. I refuse to believe that a man with that much guilt is beyond remorse or beyond redemption."

The quiet that settles around Rey falls like a sheet over the dining hall, as if everything is suspended in time.

Why does she stick up for him after all that he has done? Surely he’s done more than enough to earn her hatred most of all. But she doesn't. Instead, she stands beside him with her face flushed and her brow scrunched up in the way it gets whenever she gets worked up.

Oh, the little things he’s noticed about her: the scrunching of her nose, the way she gets up with the sun to watch it rise over the treetops, the way she can never sit still, the way she still appraises everything with a scavenger's eye, finding worth in everything. Even people like him. The way she drinks in the richness of the vibrant greens of D'Qar when she thinks no one is looking. The way she lights up wherever she goes, this sunshine girl reared by gritty sands and harsh blows that only the desert can deal.

He couldn't bear to be the one to take that light away.

"I'll go," he tells her. Anything to keep her smiling, even if it means holding his tongue when he wants nothing more than to let the traito- _Finn,_ he tells himself- know exactly what he is thinking.

"You don't have to," Rey tells him, but he knows when he is not wanted. He'd spent his whole childhood knowing when to disappear.

And so he does, trailed by two guards, without sparing even a glance behind him.

 

+++

 

"I can't believe I'm doing this."

"I can't believe General Organa made me accompany you to do this."

It's evening on D'Qar, when the colors of the sky melt together like hot wax, and the warm, sticky air turns cool. It's a rare occasion because Ben Solo, terror of the Resistance, is dressed and ready for a _first date_. All parties involved are on edge because of the situation at hand.

"What does she think I'll do? _Attack_ the person she set me up with? I'm not stupid. I know I'm treading on thin ice. I don't need a babysitter, much less you."

Rey rolls her eyes at him and he curses himself for snapping at her out of instinct. He is far too used to the push and pull, the back and forth, he’s endured the past two years. He wishes he could hold his tongue.

"I didn't ask to be here, Kyl- _Ben_." The name seems to soft falling from her lips, barely a whisper and yet it strikes him to the bones.

"It's fine, you know? You don't have to call me that name. I know that I've done more than enough horrible things to you. I don't deserve the right to be referred to as the person I was before this whole mess. If I'm still Kylo Ren to you, that's alright. I won't begrudge you the right to call me by the name that's haunted you all these years."

"No." She stops firmly beside him, shaking her head.

"No?"

"It's okay, I mean. I think I'd like to call you Ben." He lets out a sigh of relief he didn't think he was holding.

"Alright then." They lingered by the entrance to the dining hall, breathing in the weightiness of the silence between them. "Am I just supposed to just… go in?"

"Well, were you planning on waiting out here? I think that would leave your, um- _date_ with a less than stellar impression of you. It would probably be good if you were on your best behavior, considering your situation."

"Fine, I'm going, I'm going. I wasn't expecting you, a scavenger of all people, to lecture me on the etiquette of courtship of all things. I didn't think they taught you that sort of thing on Jakku." There was that mouth again. It will be the end of him, he knows it.

"Oh, switch off, would you? If you're not in there in the next ten seconds, I'm pushing you in there by force and telling General Organa you're not cooperating." He appears amused by her threat, teasing her with the barest hint of a smirk curling his lips. Ben was testing her limits. Her nose scrunches in a way she knows is childish, but there's something about him that always makes her defensive.

" _For kriff's sake_ ," she mutters before unfurling her arms from her chest and shoving him in the direction of the doors.

 

+++

 

The base seems awfully quiet the day after. It's as if people are waiting for a storm to pass.

She meets Finn that afternoon for lunch. It takes a while for him to meet her eyes, but he can’t stay mad at her. He never could. Rey leaves the mess hall feeling lighter than she did entering.

It’s the thought of Ben that stops her in her tracks when she makes her way back to her quarters. He was not there in the morning when she woke up to train, and his absence in that morning’s briefing had not gone unnoticed. Perhaps the General would know what was going on.

Rey changes course to the General's office.

"Can I come in? It's Rey."

General Organa sits with her back to the entrance, poring over something ( _Probably important_ , Rey thinks,  _it always is_.) She waves Rey to to a seat next to her without so much as turning her head an inch.

"Should I assume it didn't go very well?" Rey asks, the seat groaning beneath her as she pulls it closer to the General’s desk.

Setting her datapad down with a sigh, the General turns and Rey can see the weariness in her eyes.

"As well as anything can go with Ben. I should have been more picky with choosing someone for him, he's a bit much to handle all at once. Though if anyone knows that it's you."

"Trying to herd a Rathtar into cage would be easier to handle. I know that much from experience, unfortunately."

The snort that escapes the General is entirely undignified, and it takes all of her manners to keep from chuckling as Rey lets herself succumb to laughter as well. And that is the picture Ben walks in to: Rey doubled over trying desperately to stifle her laughter, and General Organa with a hand pressed to her lips and crinkles around her tired eyes.

"You know what from experience?"

Neither of the women in the room startle at his appearance, but the shift that his presence brings hits them all at once. He had been attempting to cloak himself to the Force.

"How kriffing _insufferable_ you are, Ben. That poor girl had a migraine after dealing with you. I had to give her today off after the ordeal you caused," General Organa scolds.

"She asked me about things that were far to personal. She had no regard for boundaries.”

General Organa sinks lower in her seat, a sigh hissing through her teeth. "You're supposed to get to know each other, Ben. That's how this sort of thing works."

"Oh, because you're the expert on this subject? Remind me, how long did you and Dad stay together before you got sick of each other?"

The warning look in the General's eyes puts Rey on edge. She pushes out of her seat and turns to advance towards Ben.

"Time to go-"

"No, Rey. It's fine. _You_ ," she says pointedly at Ben, "Sit."

He dwarves the chair he sits in, curling into himself to make himself seem smaller. No matter what, no matter how old or distant or imposing Ben becomes, he always manages to cower in the face of his mother's hard glare. Within the small package that carries the essence of General Leia Organa there are flames, and he knows he is playing with fire.

"Now, I can't keep making exceptions when you get carried away with a temper. You're acting like a scoundrel. You made a woman _cry_ , Ben."

"She was testing me."

"You plucked a thought from her head. Strictly speaking you've only been cleared to use the Force when under the supervision of Rey or Luke. You've broken enough rules, and I don't want to have to put you in a cell because you won't cooperate. Six months left to prove yourself. Remember that well."

Jaws clench and teeth grind together in silence as Ben stares on ahead, unseeing. His eyes settle on Rey, whose head tilts in a nearly unnoticeable nod. That is enough. For now.

"Alright then."

 

+++

 

The second time is even more disastrous than the first.

It was meant to be an ideal night, or as ideal a night as one can find on a base in the midst of a lull in war. A simple stroll around the more scenic sections of D'Qar and a meal specially prepared in the Alderaanian style ("There is something in the way that we prepare food that makes everything taste sweeter and heartier and more like home," General Organa had said, and in her eyes Rey sees the mark of a woman who has been forced to live many lives and to leave many lives behind.) At least, that was the plan.

They never even made it inside.

No one sees Ben for hours after dark. His location is not unknown, the tracker implanted in his arm tracking his movements in bright orange flashes across a holomap of the planet. Something about watching him in this way puts Rey off, and so she slips away from the busy command center unnoticed and ventures into the quiet darkness of the D'Qar night.

She finds him where the reflections of the twin moons ripple across a small stream and the world seems frozen beneath her feet. He sees her coming, he must have, for he tenses at her presence even though his back is turned to her. He is skittish like an animal crouched to run.

"Ben?" The words escape from her lips much softer than she expects and she hates that she seems so meek. But he hears her, whispered name and all, and she is emboldened, stepping a little closer. "I have half a mind to just drag you back to the base and let the council have at you for leaving without notice."

Only now does he turn to face her and she's shocked to see the darkness circling his eyes. Here is a man who has chased sleep for days. It's a pitiful sight, the way he slumps over himself, all heaviness and tired eyes. Rey wishes for a moment that she could take back the harshness from her words but what is spoken is spoken. She settles for taking a seat beside him.

"I haven't gone off-planet, have I?" Rey shakes her head. "Then no rules have been broken. You can leave me alone now."He turns his shoulder from her then, fixing his eyes on a point far off in the brush next to her and decidedly avoiding her gaze.

"What happened? Ben?" He stays silent, letting the quiet hang heavy in between them. "Was she not nice? Not up to your impossible standards? Wait, do you prefer men?"

He flushes red at the tips of his ears at her comment. "My preferences are none of your concern."

"Ah, there we go. You're talking now. What is it, really?"

He blows air through his teeth, playing with the words in his mouth. They taste bitter on his tongue. "She asked about my family. Said she knew my mother and had only seen my father once or twice around the base. She wanted to know how I could do it, how I could look him in the eye and know that was the man who was supposed to love me most in the world and still press the switch on that saber."

"Oh." It is something Rey has reflected on before. She's replayed the scene in her head a thousand times. No matter how she re-imagines it, Han still falls every time. It kept her awake for many nights, plaguing her sleep when she was finally able to close her eyes, and haunting her days when she could not. After a while, she learned to change the view. Not through her eyes, far above the scene, but through the eyes of the man whose life was spent in endless conflict, the push and pull between two sides which he knew to be not entirely wrong or right. And yet, in the moment, it seemed as if he had gone too far, too far to be rescued from the life he had chosen. But for a second, one glimmering second, it looked to Rey as if there might have been a chance.

And so, as Rey watched from above and Ben from below, Han Solo planted a seed, and that, she thinks, is what led Ben Solo to find his way home again after years in the dark.

"You shouldn't hide, you know? What you've done is done. Your mistakes are always going to be there. It's what you do about them that makes a difference. And for what it's worth, I don’t hate you. I don't think I could ever hate a man who tries to reconcile for his mistakes."

"Thank you, Rey." They sit there together until the sky darkens to black and stars glitter across the canvas of the night sky. Only then do they hear voices through the trees, calling out their names. Kylo's two guards rush through the brush, scowling.

"It's okay, he was with me," Rey says, and she swears she sees the barest hint of a smile flash across Ben's face.

It leaves her wishing he would smile more.

 

+++

 

Rey finds out when walking back to her dormitory the following week that General Organa is full of surprises.

"What do you think of Ben?" The abruptness of the question catches her off guard. She stops in her tracks.

"What do I think of Ben?" She wills away the pinkish tinge that fans across her cheeks but she is pinned by the General's gaze. "He's insufferable, a menace, and mouthy."

"Oh, of course. Anything else?" She hates the little knowing grin that spreads across the General's face. It only happens when she thinks she's right.

"He's- he's not so bad, I guess. He can be gentle sometimes, even nice. If he's really trying." She smiles to herself, thinking back to the curl of his lips as the light of the evening D'Qar moons danced across his face. The next words are barely more than a whisper on her lips. "I quite like his smile."

"Do you?" At the sound of his voice, she whips around and bumps straight into his chest. She curses herself for not noticing him sooner. "You need to work on sensing, Rey."

General Organa watches from behind Ben, the corners of her eyes crinkling just a bit as she bites back a smile in a futile attempt at remaining stoic.

"You were in on this, weren't you?" She says nothing, giving Rey a shrug before turning and heading back to her office.

"Have fun!" She shouts over her shoulder, footsteps fading as she leaves Rey and Ben alone in the corridor. He shifts his weight between his feet as she stares on in shock.

"Have fun? She doesn't mean-"

"Only if you'd like to." His expression is guarded, as if he is blocking himself off in case he is disappointed. "I'll walk away if you want me to."

"No, no. I would." She fights the urge to stutter. She will not let her voice fail her yet. “I’d like to.”

"Even though I'm an insufferable, mouthy menace?"  he asks, a grin playing at his lips. Rey nearly smiles at the sight of it.

"Even though, Ben Solo."

He really smiles then, all slightly crooked teeth and plush lips, and Rey wonders how a man with a smile this bright could ever have been dark after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt:
> 
> Leia plays match maker for redeemed Kylo. Rey laughs at the first few attempts and doesn't realize she's the third target.


End file.
